


in this the truth is found

by AParisianShakespearean



Series: Dreams [16]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Chantry Issues, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, PTSD, Rehabilitation, Sexual Tension, Tags to update, there are sadly no therapy programs in thedas and...yeah
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-07-07 19:51:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15915120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParisianShakespearean/pseuds/AParisianShakespearean
Summary: After the events of Kinloch Hold, Cullen was sent to Greenfell for rehabilitation. There, he meets Ness.This was what happened.





	1. there is a new face at Greenfell

**Author's Note:**

> So in the Witch Hunt DLC of Origins, there are lines that indicate Cullen was sent to a place called "Greenfell" after the Blight, (and I believe this only plays if you are an Amell or Surana.) We don't have a lot of information on this episode, but it was always of interest to me, and I had always been interested in writing my own interpretation of what happened.
> 
> Also, while I wouldn't say this story is just a conga line of angst, it does deal with the direct aftermath of what happened to Cullen during the Blight. As such, themes of PTSD and trauma will run heavily throughout, so please keep that in mind before reading. 
> 
> Thank you and enjoy :)

There is a new face in Greenfell.

In her time there, Ness has a seen a few new faces. All templars, all at the last stages of their life. She takes them their food and she sits by their bed, and sometimes she brings them to her garden nestled behind the chantry’s walls. She shows them the roses and the corn cockles and the elderflower tree. Their minds are gone but she holds their hand and she gives them a beautiful end that she prays makes up for the horrible middle. There was one templar, Ser Roland, she remembers the most. Silver and grey threaded through his dark hair and whiskers. Most of his mind was taken by vial, and when he looked at Ness he saw another maiden, similar to Ness with wheat colored hair and pale blue eyes, but not Ness herself. Rather instead he saw “Eleanor,” a maiden he spent his youth with. He asked Ness if he remembered their first kiss, the times he laid upon her lap under the Rowan tree before the templars took him away.

Ness nodded and squeezed his hand. She told him she remembered it all, and she wanted him to tell her again. She pressed her lips to his forehead after he told her he always loved her, and it was only until the Revered Mother came to her and told her that he was gone and there was nothing more she could do, that she unwound her hand from his.

She still thinks of Ser Roland. She thinks of them all.

But this new face in Greenfell is not withered and old. His face has not the shapes and plains of age, though she sees something haunted in his amber hazel eyes. The day he came in a simple white tunic and breeches with only a small knapsack, and though she was not there to meet him at the door, in her garden as she was, the Revered Mother asked her to fetch a clean blanket and pillow for this new templar’s room. Ness did, and catching up with Sister Catherine, she helped lead him in and showed him his room.

He didn’t even step inside before he asked if he may have another.

“Is there one with a window I could open, by chance?” he asks, and Ness finds the voice he used a puzzle. He had an accent similar to hers, but it was though he hadn’t used it in a while. 

“This is a fine room,” Sister Catherine says, flippant and almost insulted that he would dare not think it suitable enough. 

But Ness sees what Sister Catherine doesn’t. She sees something in his amber eyes that’s more than hesitancy. It’s fear. It’s remembrances. His face is not withered and old but in his eyes she sees a thousand years.

She asks Sister Catherine to give him a room with a window.

“The room next to me has not been occupied for some time,” Ness insists. “Give him that room.”

“The Revered Mother will not approve,” Sister Catherine insists. “Sister Agnes, you know those are our rooms, and our rooms only. These are the quarters we give the templars.”

“Does it matter? Allow him this.”

Sister Catherine was no fan of the tone Ness employed, but in the end, the young man is placed in the room next to Ness. Before he disappears into his room Ness hands him his blanket and pillow, and he thanks her softly before closing the door, though not all the way. She never caught his name. She thinks it must be a fine name for a fine man, though a man who has seen too much, though the others later says he’s belligerent. Ness doesn’t think so. She only thinks he’s sad.

Later the Revered Mother calls to her after prayers and demands she not get any ideas with him being so close to her room, and after supper before Ness can go to her garden, Sister Catherine scoffs that Ness knew exactly what he was doing.

“Yes,” Ness says. “I was trying to help. That was all I wanted to do.”

“You fancy him, that’s what. Do you think he’s going to want to sneak to your room Agnes? Do you—”

She stops listening. She remembered another templar—Ser Hamish was his name. He too did not like closed in spaces and asked if he may have a room where he could see the outside. And Agnes too, she hates closed in spaces and thanks the Maker every night for her room with a window. This new face at Greenfell, he is the same way. All she wanted was to help him, and she loathes that Sister Catherine is insinuating what she is insinuating. Even if it were true, and that all she wants is for him to make love to her, she thinks that there is nothing wrong with wanting to find comfort in a man, or anyone, so long as all parties agree. Love is beautiful, no matter what. Yet then again those seem to be radical ideas in Greenfell.

His door is ajar when she comes back from the garden and back from her final prayer. He leans his cheek upon his hand, and his eyes are half closed. The open window spills moonlight onto his golden and curly hair, and she thinks of how old and young he looks. He is a painting of a young and beautiful man, but something happened and the painting stood in neglect to become withered. It’s a contradiction that shouldn’t come to life this way, and he is a contradiction that shouldn’t be, but he is. He is and he came to Greenfell, to her.

Why is he in Greenfell?

His eyes open, and involuntarily Ness backs away. She did not expect him to see her. She did not expect herself to look at the withered painting for so long to observe every detail, such as the hollowness of his cheekbones, that make her think he needs a good meal, nor the dimple in his chin that gives him an air of regality that is too dignified for where they are.

“Hello,” she manages, the man looking at her strangely. “I’m—”

“Sister Agnes,” he says before she may give him her name, and his voice sounds stronger than it did before. “I know. That’s what Sister Catherine called you.”

“No. Ness.”

Puzzled, he cocks his head. She repeats it. She says her name is Ness.

“A bit strange, I know,” she says, playing with her long wheat braid. “But my brother used to call me Ness. I prefer that name to Agnes—and especially Sister Agnes.” And those like Sister Catherine say it so mockingly too, and it always serves as a reminder of how the chantry does not suit her. She never liked being called Sister Agnes. She even preferred it when Ser Roland called her Eleanor, even though she was not Eleanor and he saw Ness for not what she was, but for what she seemed to be.

The man is silent. “My name is Ness,” she says, for the third and final time. “Please. Call me Ness. Always call me Ness. And I should call you…?”

“What does it matter?”

She blinks. She did not find him belligerent before but that tone is belligerent. 

“I—it matters, quite a lot?” she offers, unsure of what to say, for names are always important.

He stares. Not at her, but he stares straight ahead, and it is the stare she has seen before. She knows not what he sees like she knows not what the others had seen, but the stare means all the same thing.

_Never again. Maker, never again._

He closes his eyes. Ness is careful as she approaches him. She thinks he will slip away if she does not do something, so she touches him gently on the shoulder.

“Do not touch me!” he shrieks, and he pushes her, not hard but she was not expecting it. His eyes are wide after he hears her cry, though it is more in shock than anything else, and he stands.

His eyes grow softer. He does not touch her but he raises his hands, his palms facing her.

“I am sorry,” he says. “I did not mean—” He closes his eyes again. He closes them in shame.

“Forgive me.”

“I forgive you.”

She does not touch him, but she kneels the same way she kneels in prayer, because that is what she is doing. She is praying for this man to be saved, from whatever it is that he sees.

“What is this place?” he asks suddenly. “The Knight Commander sent me here, but—”

“It is a place, where templars have peace,” Ness says, neither evading nor being blunt, not saying this is where the templars come to die or lose themselves to the vial.

He is silent for a while. The silences deafens.

“This is where Ser Roland went.”

She was so accustomed to silence that his words break the sacredness. But she knew Ser Roland, and she is surprised. She asks.

“He was my mentor,” he replies, looking toward the window. “He taught me how to hold a sword. Before I sat my vigil he started to forget, and—” he sighs at the memory. “He was a good man.”

“He called me Eleanor,” she says, and she can never forget.

He points out her name is Ness. 

“I let him call me Eleanor."

She thinks he understands, and she decides to try again, one more time.

“What may I call you?”

He does not reply. Either he is not worthy of name to be called or he is ashamed of what his name has meant or come to mean. So Ness stands, because perhaps names are an intimate thing, and perhaps she was too bold to allow him to call her Ness, rather than the formal Sister Agnes.

But she wanted him to call her Ness. Too, she liked the way he said her name. Hard at the _N_ sound but soft with the _S_. _Ness_. She wanted to hear it again.

“Cullen.”

She holds her hand to the frame of the doorway, though she does not look at him. She realizes what has happened.

He has gifted her with his name.

“Cullen,” he says again as she turns to him. “That’s my name.”

“Cullen,” she says, and she already feels intimate, at having shared their names to each other. “It’s lovely.”

“All regards to my mother, but thank you.”

She smiles. She starts to leave.

“Ness?”

Once more, she turns. “Cullen?”

“Thank you. For everything.”

She nods. She goes to her room, strips her chantry gown into her nightdress. It’s old and tattered, but she puts it on and she feels the same way Cullen made her feel when she was with him. All Ness, and all herself.

She falls asleep and dreams of the painting of him, though the painting is not withered. It's new, and he is new, and she is new. Then she wakes and sees him withered. 


	2. there is a hope

Chantry sisters forsake much for their devotion, vanity among them, but when Ness wakes that morning, aware that only a wall separated her from the new face at Greenfell, she feels a twinge of something she believes can only be called vanity. Never the attractive sort, her mother used to say, and though she thinks of that as she pulls her long wheat hair into bun that morning, she also thinks of what her brother used to say. Interesting looking, regal. Intelligent green eyes. It’s almost enough to ignore the many comments her mother made about her nose, which was always referred to as “too wide for her face.”

Even so, Ness indulges in vanity, though it’s all for naught, because when she tentatively passes by Cullen’s room, the door is open wide, the bed is impeccably made, but he is not there. Nor is he there at morning prayers or breakfast, though he is all the others can talk about.

“He came from Kinloch hold,” Sister Natalie says over porridge.

“Do you know what happened at Kinloch?” Sister Catherine interjects. “The mages all turned into abominations. Most of the templars were slaughtered, and the Rite of Annulment would have been called had it not been for the Hero of Ferelden.”

“He met the Hero of Ferelden?”

“Apparently.”

“I brought him to the Revered Mother this morning. He has this _stare_.”

“I don’t think he’s slept in weeks.”

“He’s belligerent.”

“You shouldn’t say such things.”

All eyes are on Ness. She feels the heat and her words are jumbled when she talks, but she tells Sister Catherine and she tells everyone else that if he hurts, they should help him.

Sister Catherine’s eyes are hard. “You have to want to be helped you know.”

Maybe he hasn’t been informed that they are there to help him. Maybe everyone has already expected the worst from him and he has picked up on that. Ness of course says none of this, and goes about her day as normal. In fact, it strikes her, how normal everything is, even with this new face at Greenfell. Yet it’s true, it’s all the same. There is no letter from home or from her brother as there never is, the afternoon prayers are as boring as ever, and the Revered Mother calls on her. It is the usual, every day fare, and she can’t help but know she’s disappointed, because she has yet to run into Cullen.

After supper, Sister Catherine informs Ness the Revered Mother would like to see her. Ness is usually called upon because unlike Sister Catherine or Sister Natalie, she does something wrong. Her devotion to Andraste is breakable. She didn’t sing the hymns loud enough. She whistled down the hall when she was supposed to be quiet. It’s true. The life of a chantry sister isn’t for her. She has been told time and time again. But where else would she go and what else would she do?

She expects to hear the same lecture again when she enters the Revered Mother’s office and she tells Ness to “take a seat.” We allow you here for a reason Sister Agnes. The Maker refuses to cast out His children. That is why you stay, but this foolishness needs to stop. She expects to hear much the same.

Instead, she talks about Cullen.

“Sister Catherine says you find him attractive.”

“Revered Mother, does it matter?” Ness asks.

“I hope you hold no intentions, Sister Agnes.”

Ness is silent. In other parts of Ferelden, Ness has heard that there is no leash pulled and tugged in regards to Chantry sister’s affections. Love and adoration is not a thing stifled. In Greenfell and other rural areas, it is not the same. While the rest of Thedas has grown and changed, Greenfell remains frozen in time.

Sister Agnes has a speech prepared. If she found Cullen attractive, and she in no way would admit she did, he came to Greenfell for help above all, and flinging herself at him would be wrong, wrong, wrong. But even if she did, what harm was there in admitting beauty?

It matters not. She’s unattractive anyway, no matter what.

She doesn’t say her speech. All she says is she wants to help the man. That is all.

“I don’t believe we can help him.”

Ness stares. She can’t believe the Mother’s words. The other sisters thinking that was one thing…but the Revered Mother?

“But isn’t that…shouldn’t we try?” Ness pleads.

“Do you know what happened to him Agnes?”

“He was in Kinloch.”

The Revered Mother takes a deep breath. “When the Knight Commander wrote to me about Ser Cullen and what had happened, I didn’t know how to tell him that others have come here who have seen similar. Templars sacrifice much to keep us safe from mages. These things do happen. There was a man who came here before you came to us. He was tortured by a group of apostates, barely surviving the ordeal. He had a stare, similar to Ser Cullen. He came to us, but there was little we could do. He was a walking corpse already. The lyrium helped, but only just. He was never the same, and he was let go of the Order not long after he left us. I told the Knight Commander the truth: men who have seen what Cullen has seen don’t go back to the way they were. The only thing we can do is make their time a little easier. But Sister Agnes. You must—”

“I know what I must do and what is expected of me, Revered Mother,” Ness says, rising from her chair. “He wouldn’t like me anyway.”

“That was not what I was going to insinuate.”

Ness sits back down, begrudgingly so. She stares right at the Revered Mother, who tells her something that is far worse than what she ever expected.

“Do not have hope,” she orders. “There is nothing we can do to men who have seen so much.”

 

* * *

 

 

He is in the garden later. Her garden. Out of the cockles and the goldenrod and the other flowers however, the favors the Elder Tree. It’s in bloom this time of year.

It’s the time of the day that’s Ness’s favorite, when the evening sky looks like colors spilled from a paint box. Do not dare have hope, the Revered Mother said. Men like Cullen are too far gone to ever be normal again.

But Ness would never want anyone to be normal.

He sits on the bench that Ness often sits when she is free of duty. She had plans to sit there and read that evening in fact, but the new face at Greenfell, the man who was too far gone, is already there. It’s easier to see in daylight that his hair is golden, easier to see the purple shadows under his eyes. Maker, she’s not even near him but she can see them. He is weary in the way he looks at the Elder Tree, weary in the way he moves. Ness doesn’t see a man that is too far gone. She sees Cullen.

He sees her looking at him and she blushes. He doesn’t wave but he acknowledges her presence, nodding. She was never a girl who recognized social cues, or that was what her mother used to say. Odd girl, who tried to make friends with dogs and cats, their goats from their farm. She decides to sit next to Cullen not because she thinks he wants her near, but because she doesn’t believe what the Revered Mother told her.

“Lovely garden,” he says. “It’s quiet.”

“It’s mine.”

He looks at her quizzically, perhaps because one cannot truly own the land. She knows that from the story of Cliodna, the Avvar priestess of the old legend. But she explains she was the one that tended the flowers and the trees. So perhaps though it is not truly hers, in some semblance it is hers.

“There was an Elderflower tree in Honnleath,” Cullen says. “My mother would collect the blooms. They made our clothes smell nice.”

“I have heard of that trick,” Ness says. “My brother used to do something similar. Only he used lavender.”

When she thinks of him she feels the knot. Another day, and still there is no letter. She knows she cannot rush it, but—

“What’s wrong?”

Cullen is looking at her. She tells him it’s nothing.

“It’s not.”

It’s so simple, it’s not, but no one talks to Ness or asks her how she is. No one knows how every day, she grows closer to breaking. It’s not, Cullen says, because he knows. He knows, and—

“It’s my brother,” she says. “I should have heard from him by now, gotten a letter or something, but I haven’t. I’m worried.”

“I know how you feel,” Cullen says, and though she is a woman and Chantry sister, and he is a man and a templar, she feels their essences are not so different at all.

He explains he didn’t hear from his siblings until he left for Greenfell. He feared the worst.

“I still fear the worst,” Ness admits.

He puts his hand on her shoulder. It’s only for a moment, but he is soft. He is good.

He is not beyond hope.


End file.
